Christopher Haigh

Reformation and resistance in Tudor Lancashire

Part I. The early Tudor Church: 1. The government of the Church 2. Lancashire parishes and their incumbents 3. Chapels, chaplains and chantrists 4. Priests and people: conduct and attitudes 5. Orthodox piety and practices 6. Lancashire, Lollards and Protestants 7. The county community and the outside world Part II. Reform and counter-reform: 8. The enforcement of reform in the reign of Henry VIII 9. Militant resistance: the Pilgrimage of Grace 10. The official Reformation under Edward VI 11. The unofficial Reformation: the beginnings of Protestantism 12. The reign of Mary: counter-reform 13. The reconstruction of the Church Part III. The division of a community: 14. The attempt to impose Anglicanism 15. The Elizabethan Church in Lancashire 16. The emergence of recusancy 17. Recusants and church-papists 18. Protestantism and south-east Lancashire 19. Catholics, Puritans and the establishment.

The Recent Historiography of the English Reformation

The English Reformation was not a specific event which may be given a precise date; it was a long and complex process. ‘The Reformation’ is a colligatory concept, a historians’ label which relates several lesser changes into an overall movement: it embraces a break from the Roman obedience; an assertion of secular control over the Church; a suppression of Catholic institutions such as monasteries and chantries; a prohibition of Catholic worship; and a protestantization of services, clergy and laity. Though the political decision to introduce each phase of change and the legislative alteration of statutes and canons may be dated easily enough, it is much harder to ascribe responsibility and motive for such measures. Moreover, as the interest of historians has in recent years moved on from such political issues towards the administrative enforcement of new rules and popular acceptance of new ideas, so the identification and explanation of change have become even more difficult: the pace is likely to have varied from area to area, and the criteria by which progress should be measured are far from clear. It is therefore not surprising that there has been much dispute over the causes and chronology of developments in religion, and recent interpretations of the Reformation in England can, with some simplification, be grouped in relation to two matrices. One matrix relates to the motive force behind the progress of Protestantism: at one extreme, it could be suggested that Protestant advance was entirely the result of official coercion, while at the other it could be said that the new religion spread horizontally by conversions among the people. The second matrix relates to the pace of religious change: on the one hand, it could be suggested that Protestantism made real progress at an early date and had become a powerful force by the death of Edward VI, while on the other it could be said that little had been achieved in the first half of the century and the main task of protestantizing the people had to be undertaken in the reign of Elizabeth. These two matrices provide us with four main clusters of interpretations.

From Monopoly to Minority: Catholicism in Early Modern England

Robert Parsons, the Jesuit, compiled his account of the transition of English Catholicism from monopoly to minority status in 1599–1600, and called it ‘A story of domestical difficulties which the Catholic cause and promoters thereof hath had in defending the same, not only against the violence and persecution of the heretics but also by sundry other impediments among themselves, of faction, emulation, sedition and division, since the change of religion in England’. This version of Tudor ecclesiastical history supplements Nicholas Sanders attention to evil Protestants and politicians by an examination of the Catholic response to the Reformation. The Parsons story has two groups of villains, the bishops and the parish clergy, who betrayed their faith to hold on to their livings; it has two groups of heroes, who rescued the faith by their self-sacrifice, the Jesuits and the seminary priests they inspired, and the Elizabethan Catholic gentry; and it goes something like this. The early Tudor monopolistic Church was weakened by spiritual decadence and mere conformism, and its leadership divided by ambition and faction, so it could not resist the challenge of heresy.

Revisionism, the Reformation and the History of English Catholicism

Twenty years ago, when Patrick McGrath was writing Papists and Puritans , it made sense to present the history of Tudor Catholicism in terms of early decline and later heroic recovery. Our understanding of the sixteenth century was then dominated by two books, which seemed to demonstrate revolutions in religion and government that breached all continuities in ecclesiastical and political history. In A. G. Dickenss The English Reformation , an increasingly sophisticated laity, discontented with the moral laxity and spiritual torpor of the late medieval clergy, was shown to have accepted with enthusiasm the break with Rome and the new doctrines of Protestantism. Gentlemen, lawyers, merchants and artisans responded to the energetic evangelism of the early reformers, and abandoned medieval obscurantism. Secular and ecclesiastical politicians espoused reform for their own calculations of expediency or experience of spirituality, and threw the weight of the state behind the new doctrines, while conservatives lacked the commitment and imagination to resist change.

CLERGY JPs IN ENGLAND AND WALES, 1590–1640

In the 1621 parliament members of the House of Commons clashed with the king over the issue of clergy as JPs: there were suggestions that no clergyman should sit as a JP, or that only bishops and deans should be appointed. Why were there complaints at that time, and were they justified? Was the nomination of clergy as justices an element in ‘the rise of clericalism’? This analysis of clergy JPs between 1590 and 1640 shows that they had been increasing slowly in number from 1590, and more rapidly towards 1617 under Lord Chancellor Ellesmere. But the major expansion in their ranks came under his successors Francis Bacon 1617 to 1621, and especially Bishop John Williams 1621 to 1625. However, there was no systematic central policy behind appointments, and local interests and the normal processes of patronage were important. Perhaps precedence among the justices and the exercise of secular authority by clerical JPs were sometimes troublesome issues. But, despite continuing complaints from MPs, the proportion of clergy to lay JPs was always small – at its highest in 1626, with 7·6 per cent. Thereafter Lord Keeper Thomas Coventry allowed the clerical presence to decline, both absolutely and proportionately. If there was a ‘rise of the clergy’ after 1625, clergy JPs were not part of it.

The Church of England, the Catholics and the People

The puny mind of the historian, grappling with the almost infinite detail and complexity of the past, seizes with relief upon such simplifications as are to hand. Periodisation, the division of the past into manageable blocks for the purpose of study, is an essential, but dangerous, simplification. Our understanding of politics and religion in the sixteenth century has been bedevilled by the assumption that the period of ‘the English Reformation’ was definitively completed by ‘the Elizabethan Settlement’, leaving only the residual problem of those papists who did not realise that the Reformation struggle was over and they had lost. 1558–9 is too often regarded as a decisive turning-point: students are expected to change their mentors (Elton gives way to Neale), their organising-concepts (‘the Reformation’ gives way to ‘the origins of the Civil War’), and their categories — medieval obscurantism is dead, and we are in the exciting new world of ‘the rise of Puritanism’, ‘the rise of the gentry’, and ‘the winning of the initiative by the House of Commons’.

Communion and Community: Exclusion from Communion in Post-Reformation England

On Whit Sunday 1569, after evening service, William and Geoffrey Soden went to see their vicar. They expected a difficult encounter, and took along three of their neighbours of Swalcliffe near Banbury for moral support. The Sodens had been wrangling between themselves and with their mother, and there was also some dispute with the vicar, Richard Crowley. William now told the vicar that they wished to receive communion next day, and asked ‘to know if he would admit them thereunto’. Crowley replied ‘I will not’, and said it was ‘because they came not penitently’. He explained in court later that ‘the said William and Geoffrey Soden did not come to this respondent Anno 1569 penitently or in brotherly reconciliation, but obstinately, with vehement words, as is known to the whole company then present’. Crowley had shown the Sodens the Book of Common Prayer, ‘and exhorted them in the presence of those men according to the rule of the said Book, but the said William and Geoffrey Soden regarded it not but continued still in their obstinacies’. There was more: the vicar declared ‘I have to examine you on your belief, the articles of your faith and the Ten Commandments, and do not know how you could answer.’ The brothers were furious: ‘Yea, Master Vicar, that ye go about to shame us before the whole people’, declared Geoffrey, and they stomped off ‘uncharitably and obstinately, with great threatening words’. The Swalcliffe rows simmered on.

The Taming of Reformation: Preachers, Pastors and Parishioners in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England

Many of the godly preachers of late Elizabethan England encountered resistance from their parishioners. There were often objections to their divisiveness, to their preaching of predestination, and to their liturgical nonconformity. This article argues that parochial responses prompted some clergy to adjust their strategies, and encouraged younger ministers to adopt new ways. A more comprehensive pastorate, a proto-Arminian doctrine of justification, and a more ceremonialist approach to services resulted. The Calvinist Reformation was contained and domesticated by consumer resistance as much as by conformist bishops and Arminianizing theologians. The people had their say too.

‘A Matter of Much Contention in the Realm’: Parish Controversies over Communion Bread in Post-Reformation England

In 1559 the Book of Common Prayer ordered that bread should be used at communion services in English churches, but the royal Injunctions prescribed wafers. At first, Archbishop Parker and most of his bishops tried to enforce wafers, as Queen Elizabeth commanded, but this led to protests from Protestant clergy and some laypeople, who regarded the wafers as popish. After Parkers death in 1575, however, the bishops were more inclined to enforce the use of bread – which led to widespread objections from parishioners who wanted the customary wafers. ‘Bread or wafers’ became a divisive issue in many parts of England, with Protestants refusing wafers when offered and traditionalists refusing bread. By the mid-1590s, however, most congregations had got used to bread, and after the Canons of 1604 the last of the wafer-using parishes came into line. Bread had won the day.